To allow Kosovo’s independence would demonstrate that violent secessionism works. In that case, the world ought to get used to seeing the Kosovo “strategy” http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2832
Raju G C Thomas
Kosovo’s march toward independence is gathering pace, with the leaders of Kosovo’s Albanians — Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku — threatening to declare unilateral independence any day now. This is something that Serbia will undoubtedly reject, with the backing of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Much of the world seems to think that Serbia’s role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s puts it in the wrong, and that that should be the end of the matter. But Serbia’s point of view is not without merit, and many other countries with territorially concentrated ethnic minorities have reason to be anxious about the precedent that might be set if Kosovo’s declaration of independence is recognised. Consider, first, that Kosovo is the historical heart and religious soul of Serbia. Hundreds of Serb Orthodox churches, monasteries, and holy sites in Kosovo attest to this.
Moreover, Kosovo’s demographic transformation over the last 100 years, when Albanians overtook the local Serb population, partly reflects an influx of Albanians from Albania — for decades a political and economic basket case, owing to Enver Hoxha’s hermetic communism.
At the same time, many Serbs have left Kosovo before and after NATO’s intervention in 1999, whether fleeing from Albanian violence against them or simply lured by better opportunities in Serbia proper.
Serbia’s claim to Kosovo is, to Serbs, far stronger than Russia’s claim to http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1662 (a claim still disputed by Pakistan), and the Philippines’ to the island of Mindanao. All of these are provinces with Muslim majority populations that are part of non-Muslim majority states.
But Russia, China, and India are big states and will not tolerate any detachment of their territories. So there is no serious international effort to force them to do so. The Philippines has effectively lost control of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1394, just as Serbia has lost control of Kosovo, yet no one has recognised Mindanao’s unilateral declaration of independence. So why should Kosovo’s declaration be accepted?
Nor is it only Russia, China, and India that oppose Kosovo’s independence, but also Muslim-majority http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1262 lost its Catholic-majority East Timor through Western political intervention, but its claims to East Timor were tenuous, as it only invaded the island a few decades ago.
Even in http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1494, where Catalonia and the Basque region push for secession from Spain, some in Flanders want an end to Belgium, and Scotland’s ruling Scottish National Party wants eventually to break away from Britain, support for Kosovo’s independence is far from universal.
http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=14724